Waking Up Dead
by telekineticBURN
Summary: Love. Possession. Jealousy. Maybe they knew it would end badly. [[ CallyCrashdown ]] Spoilers 1.03 Bastille Day, 2.03 Fragged Complete.


Title: Waking Up Dead  
Author: Telekineticburn  
Word Count: 7,374  
Rating: R ( language, adult situations, violence)  
Pairing: Cally/Crashdown  
Category: Relationships  
Spoilers: 1.03 "Bastille Day", 1.11 "Colonial Day", 2.03 "Fragged"  
Warnings: Adult Themes, Character Death

**Author's Note**:  
**1. The Writing Process.** My first attempt at BSG fiction, having mostly stuck to Alias an a few strange forays into BTVS. I began writing this soon after Fragged" first aired, and finished the first draft in two hours. Rewrote it a week later. Edited the rewrite. Wrote a third draft a week later. Edited that. Took out the edits five days later. Glared at it for a day. Edited draft three. Went back to draft two. Edited draft two and three together to create draft four. Edited. Glared. Cried. Now after a month I'm relatively satisfied with my vignette, though wondering if a vignette can really be 19 pages long (on Word).

**2. The Pairing.** I think the guy threatening and pointing a pistol in the girl's face in the only episode they're together in is as good a basis for a solid relationship as any.

**3. The Name Thing.** Don't know Crashdown's actual name. Yes, one would assume Cally would use it, but they never called him anything but Crashdown on the show, so the author (me) was pretty well screwed. I did attempt research into the matter but it was honestly just an excuse to look at pictures of Sam Witwer.

**4. Thanks for reading.** I truly appreciate you taking the time to read this. As far as fanfiction goes, this one really meant something to me. Reviews are of course much loved. If you must know, I've on occasion gone back and re-read reviews. Yes, I like them just that much.

-

**Waking Up Dead**

-

'She is the one so frequently maligned  
even by those who should give praise to her -  
they blame her wrongfully with words of scorn.

But she is blessed and does not hear these things;  
for with the other primal beings, happy,  
she turns her sphere and glories in her bliss.

But now let us descend to greater sorrow,  
for every star that rose when I first moved is setting now;  
we cannot stay too long.'

- Dante, _Inferno_

-

She never listened, did she?

He would tell her, voice deep and laughing, that she was beautiful. Little Cally with her soft hands and burning-sun smile, little Cally that never believed him when he caught her from behind and kissed her just _so_. Little Cally that never listened when he whispered, frantic, that tomorrow he might die and today he needed her.

There was a beginning, somewhere. He'd lost track one day amid the chaos and then it didn't really matter anyway. It was a fact, irreputable, something that didn't need explanation or rememberence. Cally belonged to him. Fact.

But it did matter, the beginning, because it fit trecherously with the end.

She never listened.

-

It was an unlikely pairing at best.

Raptors were beneath him. Clumsy, durable, safe. Mostly. Scouting missions and transport, nothing fancy, frak flying into the path of Cylon raiders. The Viper pilots hassled him, the flyboy not allowed to fly, the loud-mouth, the jock, the co-pilot. Crashdown.

Boomer was weak. He never said it aloud, never said it even to himself, but there it was. Weak. Conflicted. So fraking caught up in survivor's guilt and forbidden love that she had no stomach left for flying.

The co-pilot. The perverse sense of humor of slumbering deities.

The F.T.L. Drive was shit. Again.

"Chief!" he shouted. His voice reverbrated along the metal cave surrounding him, on his back beneath the Raptor, disengaged hullplates pried apart to expose burnt wires beneath.

He twisted sideways to scan the limited view of the deck. Military boots passed quickly, scittering from one busted aircraft to the next. Crashdown threw a wrench. "Chief! Frak it, Tyrol, get over here!"

He waited. Sweat ran through the grime and grease painting his face; It was swealtering on the flight deck (cinders of hell), burning, always, stark against the slow freeze of space sperated by a single wall of metal.

"Frak," he added wearily.

He stared blankly at the dense tangle of fried wires spitting flecks of unused electricity, malfunctioning at random despite the stillness of the engine.

Boots finally approached the Raptor. The toes were scuffed badly, the leather unpolished, the shoe size almost offensively tiny.

They were accompanied by a voice barely above a whisper. "Lieutenant?"

With a venemous growl Crashdown pushed off against the singed metal, sliding violently on the board from under the fraked-up Raptor, nearly taking out her legs.

"I called for Tyrol, Specialist," he snapped.

"You got me, sir," Cally answered, face adamantly neutral. "What's the problem?"

"I'm a pilot, that's the problem. The F.T.L. Drive is a goddamn mess. I have to land it without thrusters, and now I have to fix it myself? What the hell do you people do all day?"

She had a streak of grease across her jaw. Just above it was a jagged cut scabbed with blood and dirt. She had the biggest damn eyes Crash had ever seen. "We do what we can, sir. These birds aren't meant for this kind of stress. There's a reason they were out of commission."

Cally crouched down, scrounging through a disorganized tool box. "And all day we keep you pilots from dying. Sir."

Crashdown had no answer for that. He lay unmoving on the repair board, breath heavy, and stared blatantly at the pretty little thing kneeling beside him.

She explained quietly, voice airy and uneven, as she selected the needed tools. "Chief warned Lieutenant Valerii not the engage the Drive before setting the navigation coordinates. You probably just burned the pipe conductor switching to auto with the Drive turned on."

Crashdown didn't bother to nod. He stayed brazenly still, blocking her path to the place in need of repair. Without comment (a slight sigh, a nervous bite of her lip) Cally crawled over him, squirming through the narrow confines beneath the Raptor.

He didn't even blink as her body slid clumsily over his. He held out his hand, holding it aloft so that his fingers ran along her ribcage to her hip as she clambered in and then out of his grasp.

"Just some scorched wires. Nothing to write home about," she muttered, flustered and incensed and somehow forgetting that there was no home left to write to.

Crashdown spoke, his voice low and commanding. "Don't touch th-"

Cally let out a short, keening squeal as the frayed copper wire shocked her fingernail black.

She hadn't listened.

-

Tyrol had a lot to say about it, a lot to dislike, a lot to censure, but he held his tongue in fear of gagging on hypocrisy. He'd honestly never expected one of the badass Galactica pilots to go for a little thing like Cally.

Her talent was in her hands – small, pale, with thin fingers and callused palms. She did things with those hands that was peculiarly akin to witchcraft (unravel a rope of wire to select the one in a hundred that was about to burn out; pry apart and put back together the engine of a Viper shot to pieces; make an untouchable man growl with want just by running her thumb along his jawline).

Crashdown was teritorrial, and jealous, and competetive. The first time he kissed her, he bit her lip bloody.

Life was gut-wrenching, and on Galactica, there was no escape. In the mess, Cally surrounded by her deckmates Prosna and Socinus, Crashdown ate alone at the table closest to theirs, eating with her back to hers, chair pushed out until he could literally lean backwards and lean his head against her neck.

Often, she would simply headbutt him in response.

It happened several times. Prosna (unaware, "Clumsy Cally Clashes with Crashdown", that he'd be dead within a month) would jokingly insist the Lieutenant wear his flight helmet to dinner.

The mess, the head, flight deck, and all the dizzying corridors connecting them, the two would somehow contrive to strike into eachother. Bumps, bruises, rumors and it was goddamn pathetic. With as few words as possible - a handful of nouns, two verbs, and not an adjective to be heard - he asked her to spend the night in his barrack.

She countered with an invitation to hers. It the same military-standard closet, but brighter and softer than Crashdown's livingquarters. Instead of sparse metal and green canvas, the walls of her space were covered in posters and pictures and pink, girlish things that he memorized upon first sight.

She was _his_, understand? It was a concept beyong comprehension to anyone but Crashdown and (imperfectly) Cally. It was kept a secret but not really, because that was not the man he was : he wanted it shouted, proclaimed, and he kept quiet only by her caution and the preoccupation of his mouth on hers.

There was a beginning forgotten, an ending denied, and then there was the time between.

_That_ he would remember.

-

There was only blackness in space. For the sake of cheap familiarity, 2300 to 0600 was declared night. The crew slept while a skeleton team manned the neccessities – three in C.I.C., six Marines patroling the corridors, an engineer on flight deck, and an emergency pilot awake and ready.

A lucky coincidence. Tyrol figured Cally deserved that much.

She was dismantling the heart of Greenback's Viper when he entered, stopping short, watching excitedly as she tore away a cluster of vital wires with assured efficiency. It was entrancing, quietly, almost provocative to Crashdown the way she could move those hands.

Steel arms wrapped around her waist and tugged her backwards. With an unsure squeal her head whiplashed against his chest.

"I think the Chief's on to us," he murmured, laughing, against her neck.

Grimacing, she squirmed from his grasp. "Don't joke," she chided. "Don't play around with this."

Crashdown crossed his arms, clear confusion written on rough features. Defensively, "What, Cally? Afraid your precious Tyrol will disapprove of us?"

Suddenly, explosively, she turned and hurled a wrench at him. It glanced off his shoulder, ineffectual, and clattered to the ground, cacophonous in the desterted flight deck.

He stared at her with blank, unblinking eyes. Cally could read him (in the dark with her eyes closed, or here, alone in the dead of space) – there was fury in him, frustration.

"Assaulting a superior officer, Specialist?" he said flatly.

"Fraking a subordinate, Lieutenant?" she answered, flushed and angry and out of her mind.

"Don't call it that," he barked, grabbing her roughly by the arms. "Cally, don't you _dare_ call it that!"

She was so small, so tiny, china in his brutal grasp. He shook her, once, and there were tears in those big gorgeous eyes.

"What do you call it, then?" she whispered. "What _am_ I to you?"

He was staring again, frantic, with that look she could never quite decipher, one of want and uncertainty mixed with a toxic dose of self-loathing. It was silent as he grasped her, clutching hands branding her upper arms black and blue, close enough to feel his shaky breath thick against her face.

Then he was laughing.

Low, easy laughter, spreading through the air as he slipped his arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet. "_Everything_," he laughed, spinning her in a circle. "You're _everything_ to me, you silly little moron."

So there it was. She was terrified, clinging to him in disbelief, because she loved him and never could get her head around the fact that he'd rebuilt his entire world centered on her and her alone. That was all it was, you know – love. She'd been expecting ridicule and disinterest ('_done with you now'_) and Crashdown had disappointed her.

It took some adjustment. There were faked headaches and haggled rotation switches, cheated time spent together locked in Cally's barrack, excited whispering and roaming touches and, frequently, card games. Because Cally lacked the patience for card strategy, and was terrible at bluffing, and she let Crashdown chose his award when he beat her in five hands.

It was close to perfection, the time Between.

-

Crashdown had argued when she told him she was assigned to oversee the engineering crew on the Astral Queen. He ran through the obvious objections : Tyrol was better suited, she was more useful working with the Vipers, she would be tasked with giving orders to hardened criminals… he would miss her night and day. It had been selfish reasons for wanting her to stay on Galactica, and it had never truly occurred to him that she would be in any danger.

He kissed her goodbye hidden behind the supply rack on deck, and didn't say a word to her the entire flight as he punched in coordinates from the back of the Raptor.

"Be safe," he said generally, releasing the docking ramp for the passengers to ascend. He turned back to his console as Captain Adama handed her onto the deck of the Astral Queen.

Crashdown returned to Galactica and, off-duty, sat alone in the quiet of Cally's barrack.

No one thought to tell him. Fraking heart-breaking, but those were the pitfalls of an off-the-books relationship. Those privy to their secret had more pressing issues, and those unaware of it had no reason to call in a jaded Raptor jock when one of the engineering crew got shot up during an attempted rape.

He was not there when they wheeled her into Life Station, hazy from the pain, her gut shredded and the timeline blurry – when had they left the Astral Queen?

"Crash," she cried out, and Dr. Cottle wrote it off as panicked nonsense. She was taken into surgery, the bullet dug out along with ruined bits of her stomach, stitched up and drugged up and left alone in a draped-off corner of the hospital after a parade of worried crewmates had come and gone. He was not there, not there, and she awoke to cold lips kissing her fingertips.

The lights on the floor were turned low, the curtain pulled shut around Cally's bed. Crashdown sat stiffly on a stool beside her, in all honesty looking worse than she did.

He forced a smile. "Hey, baby girl," he said, his sudden voice low and rusted. "Been waiting for you to wake up."

She made a slow, moaning sound, relief and anguish warring across her face. "Crash," she said. "Weren't here."

"Nobody told me," he choked, stroking her lips so that she opened her eyes. "Nobody said my sweetheart was up here takin' a nap."

"Found me, though," she noted, blinking away the haze of sedatives.

"Chief let me know. Seemed to be worried, for some reason. Guess he doesn't know how tough you are." He kissed her fingers again, and she noticed then that his hands were shaking.

She lifted a weary arm and shoved him. "I'm alright, flyboy. I'm just fine."

Crashdown smiled, briefly, heartache flashing through his eyes as he withdrew a deck of pyramid cards.

Cally put up a fight : he won the game in seven hands.

She tossed her losing cards onto her lap, the makeshift cardtable. "So what'd you win this time?"

He frowned briefly, gathering up the cards to keep busy as he thought. "Something I don't know," he said finally.

Cally laughed. "A bit more cryptic than 'let me use handcuffs', but intriguing nonetheless."

"Don't pretend you didn't like that one," Crashdown scolded, smirking. "Tell me something about you that I don't know."

She bit her lip while she considered, a brilliant constrast of glistening red against the white pallor of her skin. "I wanted to be a dentist," she declared stoutly.

Crashdown lasted four seconds before he burst into laughter.

"I joined the military to pay for dental school," Cally elaborated. "I was assigned to Galactica to complete my service. I was thinkin' about staying on when Caprica… well, Chief said I did good work. Good hands, he said. I was thinkin' about it."

"A dentist," he repeated, squeezing her hand as much-needed amusement relieved the exhaustion from his body.

"I like musicals," she continued, lacing her fingers through his and talking easily through a soft smile. "Those old movies from the 1900s, you know, where any problem is inexplicably resolved at the two-hour mark by a song and dance routine. I used to listen to the recordings on my radio at night before you starting comin' over. I was too embarrassed to play them with you around."

His voice was quiet, hardly a sound at all : "What else you like, beautiful girl?"

"Kiwis. They're a highly underrated fruit." Her eyes were beginning to flicker. "Engines. They're like living things, needing to be fixed all the time, never just right, never completely wrong." She smiled shyly, a blush creeping in. "And I like your body."

Crashdown cocked a grin, bemused. Arrogant, but that was part of the deal. She would've been disappointed without the smug expression.

"It's not the most graceful thing in the world, but it's sturdy. I like the way you're so tall that I fit right under your chin when you get your arms around me," she continued, eyes completely closed now as sleep edged into her words. "I like how your hair tickles me when you fall asleep on my stomach. I like how my lips are always, _always_ scratched from you biting at me all the time."

She thought for a moment for something else he didn't know.

"I like loving you."

Crashdown smiled. "Yeah?"

She nodded, drawing a shuddering breath before saying, "I was terrified, you know. The prisoner, Mason, he scared me so badly. I kept thinking I'd never see you again."

There was nothing he could say, not really. "I'll kill anyone who hurts you again."

She drifted to sleep with him tightly clutching her hand.

-

It wasn't so much ambition as an unwavering sense of unfairness.

He'd passed basic flight with little enthusiasm – he was a pilot, always a pilot, not a nugget, a rookie, a newbie confined to the flight simulator. He belonged in a Viper and any fool worth their wings knew it.

Only they didn't. All they saw was a petulant amateur who considered himself above the rest.

He _was_ gifted. He _was_ a natural. But so was every other student in the class.

Within a year at the academy he was busted down to Raptor flight. His instructor was more than willing to sacrifice any potential Viper credentials in favor of getting the cocky son of a bitch the hell out of his classroom. Crashdown felt it like a knife (_unfair, unjustified, just frakin' jealous_) and neglected his Raptor studies accordingly.

He graduated and was commissioned to Triton as an E.C.O. to the local air patrol. He was in the sky to witness doomsday.

The explosion – devasting, but that was a paltry word, ineffective when you've seen the world below you rip in half – had wiped out the controls of the Raptor as the Cylons decimated Triton. The pilot had snapped his neck when the concussion of the nuclear attack struck the Raptor, leaving Crashdown adrift in space with a dead pilot at his side and a dead world below.

He'd been picked up by Galactica and shoved into war. He'd say he never asked for it, but of course he did. He _wanted_ center stage, to be a pilot on a Battlestar, and it would be damned difficult to think of a better opportunity than serving on the last wing command left of civilization.

It was misguided, an inevitable tragedy, the vilification Crashdown felt every time he saw his name posted in perethesis after Boomer's on the flight rotation.

He was born to lead, or born to _want_ to lead. There was a difference, somewhere. Life had become something rancid, uneven, a cycle of heaven and hell, moments with Cally and then the unending sucker-punch of perceived insignificance.

It was a primer, these thoughts, and he never saw it coming.

-

"Ten cubits says she takes him this time," he announced, leaning back in his chair as he watched the battle unfold.

The rec room was mostly deserted, those off-duty asleep save for the group gathered at the cardtable.

"You're on," Boomer said from across the table littered with cubits, shotglasses, and folded cards.

Baltar cast his coins onto the pile. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. Ten to stay."

Starbuck was seemingly noplace near, her mind gone missing as she stared without seeing at the cards she held in her fist.

They waited for her decision to call. Baltar glanced, disinterested, at Crashdown. "Something smells horrible in here. Is that you, Crashdown?"

He'd come from hours of voluntary repair work on the flight deck. Not his shift, not his problem, but he'd offered Tyrol a hand and spent his scarce free time underneath Muse's Viper, messing listlessly with the burnt roll thrusters. Crashdown had no patience for the work, a free shift better spent sleeping, but Cally was on duty and he got more rest just watching her than from an hour in the rack.

After an inordinate amount of time spent sweating in the remorseless heat of flight deck and getting nothing done, Cally had wandered her way to his side and asked him, very politely, to get the hell out of her way and stop tiring himself out _before_ she was off-duty.

He quickly gathered together enough crew for a cardgame.

"Yeah, that's me," Crashdown told Baltar unapologetically, shrugging.

"Your card. Your card," Baltar reminded Starbuck. Silently, Cally entered the room. She moved without comment to the bulletin board, quickly scrawling a copy of the repair notices onto her flight checklist.

A moment later Starbuck threw down her cards and fled the room.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Starbuck…" Crashdown called after her, his voice reverbrating off the slammed metal hatch. "Okay, she can't do that."

Boomer gathered her winnings, standing. "She can, and she did."

The table quickly disbanded. Crashdown watched his girl from across the empty Rec.

"Hey, little thing," he called out.

She barely lifted her eyes from the bulletin she was tasked to copy. "Evening, Sir. I'm still on duty."

"And I'm still waiting," Crashdown replied, taunting.

In a moment she finished her notes, tucking the clipboard under her arm. On her way to the door she may a detour, hopping onto his metal folding chair to stradle his hips.

"I guess I could take a break," she breathed, grabbing hold of his collar and kissing him nimbly, lips parted wide to let his tongue easily access her mouth.  
And there were those hands again, legerdemain, dancing along his jaw, over his flightjacket… under his military tanks… against his bare chest. He groaned low in his throat, relieved, and tore blindly at the zipper of her (bulky, unflattering, adorable) flightsuit.

"I have to get back," she gasped, as she nipped his ear and he slid his fingers into the waistband of her standard-issue slacks.

Crashdown curled his free arm around her waist and lifted her with him off the metal chair, pushing her down against the still-cluttered cardtable. He climbed above her, tugging free the string binding her feathery hair back. "I outrank you," he breathed. "Your under my command."

Cally giggled at that, shoving him lightly as she squirmed beneath him. "Bad pun, Crash," she admonished.

Without answering he tugged her flightsuit off her shoulders, biting at her bare neck with familiarity.

She manuevered sideways, wriggling from his grasp despite his protests. "Stop," she laughed. "Later, Crash, I gotta go. I gotta –"

Cally lost her voice momentarily as he slipped downwards to run his tongue along the line of her waistband.

"Chief wants the pilot's repair notices right away," she continued determinedly, pushing him off enough to drop to her feet from the table.

Crashdown stared at her, out of breath and flushed. Starved, he said, "Well, if _Chief_ wants you…"

"It's my job." She smartly zipped back up her flightsuit. "If the CAG told you to do something, would you put it off until you've had a quick one on the Rec Room table?"

He didn't even hesitate. "Hell, yes." And he reached for her again.

"Chief wants me to check Raptor 2's transponder," she declared, stepping out of his reach. "I'm busy now, Crash. Think of a good way to punish me when I'm off duty."

She had darted forward and kissed him on the cheek before he could react enough to grab her. She disappeared with a flash of soft, loose hair.

"You never listen," he called after her, alone, dishevelled. With a hiss of frustration he dropped on his back onto the tabletop.

-

Crashdown was sweet with her, always, excited and jubilant every time he caught her eye. The crew, who knew about it because it was an impossibility not to, became used to the mercurial moods of Boomer's E.C.O., the contradictory flyboy who was equal parts jocular and sullen, and who would brighten like a frakking starshower every time Specialist Cally walked into the room.

He gave her flowers, sometimes. They were rare, precious things nowadays, more expensive than he'd admit, and he bought them every time he was tasked to transport visitors from Galactica to Cloud Nine. She was his everything, in all honesty : sunshine and water, something soft amid the sharp edges of this new reality. Crashdown treated her with reverence, warmth, and immersed himself in loving her so fully that he could ignore the nagging fact that he was _so goddamn scared_ that one day he'd have to face a mirror and he'd crumble.

Cally loved him with nothing else in mind. But still.

Sometimes he placed her so high on the pedestal that she got to feeling vertigo.

-

Colonial Day was when it all unravelled.

The Galactica crew was invited (_the People_, voiced by politicians with a photo op in mind, insisted they attend) en mass to the banquet in honor of the newly elected Vice President. Insanity, Crashdown thought, that a man which such indistinct morals yet obvious schizophrenia would lead them should Roslin bite the dust.

Cally had been downright giddy at the prospect of seeing Crashdown in dress uniform.

He was kept busy during most of the celebration, promoted for a day to pilot a Raptor solo from the neccessity of constant passenger transportation. _Glamorous_, he seethed, ignoring the unceasing chatter of the two hammered dignitaries standing in the cramped confines of the Raptor. It was not the kind of thing Raptors were designed for, not exactly, but the military had been charged with full security of this circus and the ships were by far the safest.

He arrived late at the Banquet Hall to see Cally spinning happily on the dancefloor.

She was breathtaking, and beautiful, and every cliche he could think of, as he stood at the railing looking down at her. She wore a dress, not the military blues of her male counterparts but a white frock that swirled about the bare calves that caught the notice of every man on the premesis. His Cally was not a vixen, not by a long shot, but the sway of her hips left all eyes convinced that Crashdown was a lucky son of bitch.

Tucked in the braid of her short hair was the half-withered daisy he'd given her two days earlier. Laughing, she spun into Tyrol's arms.

Crashdown watched, incensed, as the grinning Chief slid his hands along her hips. Onlookers, fellow soldiers from the engineering crew, clapped encouragement as Little Cally ground against Tyrol to the beat of the music.

Crashdown gripped the railing with white knuckles as she turned and seductively nipped at the Chief's ear. Her audience howled appreiciatively, and Tyrol sportively tapped her on the butt.

Blood pounded in his ears, and momentarily Crashdown couldn't breathe. He watched, stone-faced, as Cally danced with erotic abandon against any man who reached for her, Little Cally who was suddenly the belle of the ball, who was supposed to be _his_.

He left the gala regretting he'd even come.

-

She entered her tiny room on Galactica at 0400 hours, flushed and fully awake, her shoes dangling from her hand. She fumbled for the lightswitch, humming that same song under her breath. The light flickered on and only then did she notice him.

"Crash!" she squealed. "Where were you? I was looking for you all night!"

He lay on her bed, stripped to the waist and staring at her, expressionless. Instantly she sensed peril – Crashdown wore his feelings in his eyes, always, but tonight he watched her with a vacancy that seared.

He didn't move as she walked forward.

"You promised you'd dance with me," Cally said, pouting nervously. "What happened? You just forget about you're girl all night?"

Suddenly, he sneered. "I saw you," he hissed. "_I saw you_."

"You saw me – Crash, what -?" Her face twisted into a look of pretty petulance, confused, and he leapt from the bunk faster than she could follow.

"Bet he _loved_ it," Crashdown spat angrily. "His fraking hands _all over_ you!"

Unsure, Cally retreated a step. "_Who?_ Where were you? Crash, what's wrong?"

She'd never seen him like this and never, never should have.

Reality. No take-backs.

The sound of his voice held madness, anger choked with tears, and that handsome face of his was a mask of broken determination. "Thought you knew better, Cally," he said. "Thought you understood."

She stamped her foot in impatient confusion. "What are you _talking_ about?"

"Take that thing off," he muttered suddenly, eyes on her flirty little dress.

A lightning bolt, hysteria, shot through Cally. "I don't underst-"

"_Take it off,_" he barked. "That's an _order, _Specialist!"

She slapped him.

With flashing brutality he seized hold of her wrists, driving her backwards until she was pressed painfully against the wall. Cally had no time for breath before his teeth were prying apart her lips, kissing her with a branding insistance that held no trace of affection, only resentment and lust and fury.

Panicked, Cally pushed against him. "Crash, stop – what are you _doing?_"

He ignored her, reaching around to rip at the lacings of her gown. He nearly suffocated her with his kiss, a livid, animalistic thing that brought her mind right back to the nightmare of the Astral Queen.

"_Stop_," she cried, but of course he didn't - he threw her down onto her bunk and tore away their remaining clothes. He pinned those treasured hands down with his own, nipping at the underside of her breast with his teeth in the way she'd moaned for a thousand times before tonight, and the hissing in his ears only told him that _she was his_. Jealousy festered, poison in his veins, and Crashdown wouldn't, _could not_, allow himself to realize that there were horrified tears welling in those big gorgeous eyes.

He got it wrong. Wasted talent, absolute love, treacherous fears, all crossed up and burning inside of him, Crashdown got it wrong.

One hand running over her ribcage, the other clamped over her muffled mouth. He thrust relentlessly, painfully inside of her, reaching toward a tainted release. His breaths were ragged, the sounds coming from deep within his chest nearly inhuman as he forced her legs wide beneath him. Bruises appearing everywhere as he took her, all of her, drowning in the feeling of her tense, shaking body.

Neither of them slept as the hours ticked by. Neither had bothered to turn off the low light. He lay atop her, tangled in the unclean sheets, staring at the wall. Cally held her eyes closed against his chest.

Slowly, muscles screaming, he tilted his head around and softly kissed the bare skin between her shoulder and collar bone.

"Cally," he breathed, reaching his hand up to run through her half-unbraided hair. The daisy that had adorned it lay crumpled and torn, forgotten on the floor beneath the bed. "Cally, baby, I'm sorry."

A sudden sign of life, she cringed.

"Cally, just listen to me –"

"Don't," she whispered, expression tortured, refusing to open her eyes. "Please, don't… just… please, just _go_."

It was 0620, forty minutes until duty hours. Crashdown stared down at her, his beautiful little goddess, and felt sickened.

He dressed and left the barrack. There was nothing of their routine as he withdrew : he did not stop to gather her clothes from the floor, she did not promise to find him after her shift, and he did not kiss her goodbye.

There was nothing after that.

-

He tried frantically to pretend that everything was fine.

What he wasn't expecting was for it to work. None of the other pilots seemed to notice that Crashdown had been gutted, torn apart, left for dead. He had responded by laughing louder, talking trashier, and doing everything in his power to ignore the goddamn hole in his heart that expanded every time he went to sleep without touching her.

When he passed her in the hallway, her eyes slid past him, around him, through him. She didn't speak to him. Ever.

Life just… went on. Wretchedly, impatiently, time ceased its standstill and reality left them gasping. There was no distraction anymore, no Cally to make him smile, no Crashdown to keep her safe. It (love, euphoria, _home_), whatever '_it_' was between them, had eroded and crumbled.

He needed someone to blame and couldn't bear looking in the mirror.

So he blamed Cally, because he'd thought she had understood, and maybe she never had heard him. Mistakes, mistakes, and no apologies could _ever_ bandage this wound.

Cally avoided him effectively until Sharon blew her face open cleaning her gun. An accident, a crying shame, (self-absortion meets frakking idiocy) and no one was the least bit surprised when Doc Cottle wrote "Attempted Suicide" on the medical report. Crashdown liked Boomer but despised her, respected her but scorned her, felt sympathy but it was her own damn fault.

Cally cared about Boomer. But then… but nothing.

He'd faked the universal enthusiasm streaming through the fleet at the discovery of Kobol – great news, replenished hope, and it didn't mean shit to Crashdown. Earth was just another piece of half-burnt rock without…

… Well. Without anything.

It was her fault, anyway.

They assembled on flight deck, divided into groups. Tyrol had assigned each set of crew to one of three Raptors, and nowadays sending Cally with Crashdown was more cruelty than kindness. Cally hadn't argued, and Crashdown hadn't been asked.

He read the count aloud : "Jump in ten, nine, eight -"

She was crouching in the back of the Raptor beside Tyrol, hair pinned back, eyes unblinking, and Crashdown remembered when she'd told him in secrecy that there were few things that scared her more than flying ("_Crap choice for careers, then,_" he had told her, and she had attacked him with kisses).

"- three, two, one."

A blur of indistinguisable light, and, "Jump complete, gentlemen."

Crashdown had almost forgotten the whispering grandeur of a white-washed planet viewed from orbit. Beautiful, breathtaking. The raiders were on them in seconds.

He heard nothing but the sound of her terrified screams.

-

Chaos, the unfamiliar color of dazzling green against the everyday shades of metal and flame.

He scrambled back into the destroyed Raptor, reaching hastily through the fire to clamp down on the outstretched hand of Baltar and wrench the dazed man out onto the grass.

The whole damn thing went up in a maelstrom of orange and red as Crashdown stood gasping for air.

It was judgement day. Time for the test and every fraker who had written about the guts and the glory had certainly never seen the crash site where the survivors now stood.

Three dead and Socinus not far behind. He watched, blind, as Sellix jammed a needle of serisone into Socinus' arm, as Tyrol and Tarn and Cally gathered far-flung equipment, as Baltar lay on the grass and hallucinated.

A priori. An army of busted-up deckhands and he was the highest-ranking officer. It was his chance to lead, to command, to have what he'd always deserved and been denied. Crashdown sat alone and watched the festering destruction in silence.

Those soft, tiny hands were suddenly there, clutching a rag as she dabbed at the innumerable dripping slices running along his buzzed scalp.

"Infection," she murmured, and Cally's voice was low and shaking.

She hadn't spoken to him since the morning after Colonial Day. It was all he could do not to sob into her arms.

"Leave it, Specialist," he said tightly, and pushed those hands away.

She may have betrayed agony in her expression, she may have opened her mouth to offer forgiveness, she may have reached out to touch him, but Crashdown had already turned away.

He hoarsely gave the order to move out.

-

In the end, Crashdown couldn't handle it, and really he never came close.

It was what Cally had loved about him, and it was why she lost him. Jealousy, groundless, but he had wanted to be so much more.

He failed.

Was he selfish? Was he wrong? He believed in that lie, that he was better than he appeared, smarter, faster. That he had the chops when he was just a scared little boy playing pilot. Hand him the blame or offer him pity? Neither… Both?

It's really just a matter of taste.

There was nothing between Cally and Tyrol and Crashdown knew it. He had let his imagination frak everything up because what he had with Cally was just too good to last.

Simple. Fact.

He might've told her this, but no point. She never listened.

Kobol was a hell that he'd been running from his entire life. Every command that came out of his mouth was obstinate, every decision made was wrong, and every survivor left alive knew it. He was drowning before her eyes, his Little Cally, and she couldn't reach him through the concrete veil between them.

Another bad decision and Tarn got riddled with bullets. Bickering about who should carry the retrieved med kit and suddenly his chest exploded.

It ended there on Kobol, ended bloody, and the worst of it was that she had to watch it slowly unfold to ash.

"Lords of Kobol, take these brave men into your arms. Take upon your arms the spirits of our fallen –" He faltered, coming up blank.

They waited for him. Impatient.

"Take up in your arms the spirits of our fallen friends so that they may share in the everylasting life that awaits us all beyong the vale of tears. So say we all."

He was alone. Surrounded by his disarrayed troops and completely alone. His eyes were hollow, fixed on the dogtags of their dead companions (trees, leaves, singing birds, everything alive except for their comrades).

Cally spoke in unision with Sellix, Chief and Baltar. "So say we all."

Crashdown grabbed up the dogtags before they moved out. He was half-gone and fading fast.

There was nothing, nothing she could do.

Baltar was the final cut. He stood in the clearing and shouted his frustration. "This is absurd. What, we're taking o­n the Cylon army, are we? Us? Look at us. What, with two rifles and a canteen? Have you lost your _mind?_"

That's rich, thought Cally, coming from the Vice, and she almost laughed.

Crashdown didn't say a word. Not one fraking word. Chief yelled, bickered, barked the Doctor into silence, but the damage was done.

"Your briefing, El-tee," Tyrol insisted.

She'd never seen her guy so hollow. So… weary. So fragile.

Crashdown sworn he'd kill anyone who hurt her again. She wondered if he even remembered telling her that.

He outlined his attack strategy. Stupid, suicidal, and unyielding, his obstinance would leave them murdered one by one.

They didn't argue at first. With nothing left, all they had was their military training, and Crashdown was the only officer on site. The mutiny was helf under wraps just until the sky thundered with the arrival of a spacecraft.

He pretended to be sure. "All right, everyone, move out. It's game time. We're taking these toasters out before they kill any more of us."

Everyone primed for action. Everyone but Cally.

Crashdown met her eyes for the first time in weeks.

"I said move, Cally," he said flatly.

She _felt_ the last of his bravery snap. He was sick, sick (_so goddamn scared_) of trying to be what he wasn't, sick of wasting his life, sick of facing the day. He was never freaking good enough, never… He needed her to live.

He needed her to get out of here alive.

"I can't," she cried.

"What? That's an order," he snarled.

Do you understand yet? He needed her to run down that pathway, to distract the Cylons just long enough for him to lead the charge and save the day. He needed her to survive to fall into his arms and declare him a hero.

But she wouldn't. She'd be dead before he even cleared the treeline. Cally knew it, but Crashdown couldn't let himself. Because there would be nothing after that. No illusion, no Fearless Leader persona to cover up the black insignificance of his true self.

He'd hid behind that mask all his life. Cally would die because of him, and there'd be no place left to hide.

Tyrol tried : "She doesn't have to. We can just go take out the dish."

To the very end he could not give up his illusion. "Cally, you have to move. Cally, this is not a joke. This is not a _game_, Cally!"

A game? Of course it was. Little. Frightened. Boy.

Yelling. Cally whispered, "I can't do it."

_She never listened._

"I said go!"

"No!"

Caged in a corner, wild, unstoppable – Crashdown did the unthinkable and drew his firearm, aiming it unsteadily at his Cally's forehead. "You're going out there, Cally," he choked. "You're going out there or I'm gonna blow your brains out. Right here, right now."

Tyrol, placacting, urging him to calm down, but Crashdown watched her face and there was nothing in this world but the two of them. She was crying, hysterical, because she loved him more than anything, and he stared at her, unblinking, because _she never listened_.

"I'm gonna count to three," he said.

Chief had his own gun out now, pointing it at Crashdown, but nothing seemed to penetrate as the lieutenant gripped his pistol in shaking white knuckles.

"Two." He wanted nothing more than to kiss her tears away. "Three."

Baltar plugged two bullets into Crashdown's back. He bucked forward slightly, propped against a frail tree, dead before she could even reach out and touch him.

So they ran. Ran through the forest amid a hail of bullets, nearly dying with every breath they took, ran until they stopped and fought and were found. Captain Adama landed the Raptor in an open field littered with blasted toasters. Apollo handed Cally up into the ship and she clambered inside without daring to look back. Tyrol pressed Crashdown's dogtags into her palm and she gripped them without thinking, her mind gone blank.

It took a while for her to comprehend what had happened on Kobol. Reporting to flight deck four days later to check on a busted F.T.L. Drive, and Chief had had to be called in to carry the sobbing Specialist back to her bunk. It was so simple, really. Crash and Cally had loved eachother with everything they had, and he was gone, laying cold somewhere on the hellhole planet that was supposed to lead them home. He hadn't been tough enough, hadn't been a hero, and had payed a desperate price for pretending to be one.

So Cally carried on, fixing her ships, and spent the rest of her life waking up dead.

Crashdown hadn't measured up in the end, couldn't handle it when the the gloves were off. She never thought to blame him, lying awake with his dogtags twined between her soft, nimble fingers. She remembered the things he had said, and some of the things he hadn't, because she _had_ listened. She had understood every damn thing he had ever tried to tell her - that he'd been weak, and arrogant, and that he'd been terrified of living without her.

It was Crashdown's fault, all of it, from the Beginning, the Middle, and the End. But it was nothing that she couldn't forgive. She would look for a moral and find none.

There would be no speeches, no memorial, no declaration heralding the loss of Crashdown. Those were reserved for heroes. Cally watched the people around her, Chief, the Old Man, Starbuck, Apollo – she watched the heroes aboard Galactica and wondered if they even knew what it felt like to stand just to the left of the spotlight.

She wondered who decided only heroes could die noble. Why their deaths mean so damn much when the cowards are just as mortal as they are.

She would ask, but nobody would listen.

**End.**


End file.
